by Edward Eager
"Cities are bigger," said Susan.
"Cars go faster," said Abbie. A Thunderbird sped by on the road before them, just to prove it.
"Planes fly higher," said John. "We're exploring outer space now. Of course, you can't see from here," he added, as the little girl looked at the sky expectantly.
"What's that?" said the little girl, pointing upward.
Everyone looked where she pointed, and Susan uttered a cry of alarm.
What "that" was was Grannie, sitting perilously poised on the window sill of John's gable room and washing the window from outside, a thing Susan and John had strictly forbidden her to do.
"Hello," she greeted them. "That puzzle wasn't any good. It wouldn't come out."
"Stay right there," called John, in a voice he hoped was calm. "Don't move."
He ran inside, and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka followed.
If you have never had a grandmother like Grannie (and many have not), you may be wondering about her, and how so active and unexpected an old lady happened to have such calm, sensible grandchildren as Susan and John. In a way, that may be part of the reason. They had learned to remain calm, no matter what.
But if you are thinking of Grannie as just a dotty old lady, you are wrong. She was far more. As to exactly what she was, this is not the time or the place to say. That time will come.
For now, it is enough to know that it took five minutes and the combined arguments of all five children to persuade Grannie off the window sill and into the house and downstairs, and establish her in the parlor rocker with some suitable tatting.
"There," said Susan, coming out on the porch again with the others. "Excuse us for leaving you alone." Then she broke off.
The little girl wasn't alone. A man was standing on the front lawn, and the little girl was staring at him in pale surprise.
"Something terrible happened," she cried. "I suddenly remembered I left Baby sitting there on the sidewalk, back home in Toledo, Ohio! So I wished on the charm, but it's all gone wrong. Baby didn't come. He came instead!" And she pointed a finger of horror at the man.
"You must have forgotten the half part of the magic," said Susan. "You must have forgotten to say two times everything. You must have brought him half here."
"I couldn't have. Does he look like half a baby?"
The five children looked at the man and had to agree that he did not. The man was big, and he wore a suit and a shirt and a tie and a hat. He looked, in short, like a man. But that was at first glance.
As the five children went on looking, the man put his thumb in his mouth. And the little girl gave a cry.
"It is Baby! I'd recognize him anywhere! He always does that! But what's happened to him?"
"I think I see," said Barnaby. "It could be worse. Just his bottom half might have turned up, or just his top. Or the charm might have brought him all half there and transparent, like the ghost of a baby. It did something like that once before. But it likes to thwart people in a different way each time. So it brought him here half grown up!"
"About thirty-seven years old, I'd say," said John.
"Sure! Prob'ly just the age he'd be if he'd really been growing all these years," said Barnaby, "but the half of him that's inside is still just a baby!"
"This is awful!" said the little girl, looking at the babyish man. "I can't take him home again like that! Mother wouldn't want him like that!"
"It's very simple," said Fredericka. "All you do is, you make another wish. And get the 'rithmetic part right this time."
"I can't" said the little girl. "When I saw him, I was so surprised I dropped the charm, and it rolled down the walk and he picked it up and put it in his pocket. And it's no use asking for it back. Baby'll never give anything back!"
She looked at the man, who was now sitting on the grass making a mud pie. Then she burst into tears.
"Don't cry," said John. "We'll get it for you."
"Let me," said Susan. After all, it was supposed to be her turn at the magic. And she had always been good with babies.
She went up to the manly form. "Naughty, naughty," she said. "Baby mustn't touch. Nasty magic charm. Burney burn. What did Baby do with it? Tell Susan."
"How can I?" said the baby (or man). "I can't talk."
Then it looked surprised. "Who said that? Did / say that? Why, I can too talk!" it said. "Can I walk, too?" It got up and staggered a few steps. "I can walk!" it cried. "Look at me; I'm walking!"
"Clever baby!" said Susan. But the man (or baby) paid no heed.
"This is wonderful! I can go anywhere I like!" it boasted. "No more big people carrying me around and telling me what to do! No more everlasting baby carriage! I'm free!" And it started for the gate. Now that it was getting used to walking, it hardly staggered at all.
But the little girl barred the way. "Wait! Stop!" she cried. "Don't you know me?"
The baby looked down at her from its vast height. "Yes, I do," it said. "I know you now. You're that big one that keeps picking me up and carrying me away just when it's getting interesting and putting me to bed. But never again any more of that from now on! From now on I'm bigger than you are. I can pick you up and carry you away!"
And it did.
"Put me down!" cried the little girl, jogging along the road in its overgrown clutch.
"Come back!" called the five children, running to the gate and peering after them.
The man (or baby) was heading down the road in the opposite direction from town, toward the little country railroad station that is called Talmadge Hill.
"Reach in its pocket! Find the charm!" Barnaby shouted after the little girl.
"I can't! He's got me all scrooched!" the little girl called. And after that any further words died away in the distance.
The five children looked at each other.
"Shall we just let them go?" said Susan. "I suppose what happens now is really her adventure, in a way."
"But it's part ours, too," said John. "We helped get them here. Besides, the railway crossing's straight ahead of them. That baby wouldn't know any better than to sit down on the tracks and play dandelion clocks!"
Luckily at this moment the mailman happened along in his truck, and the five children all knew him, so it was all right for them to accept a lift, though aggravating when he stopped at every passing mailbox. At the foot of the hill that led to the station, he turned into a driveway with a special delivery package; so the five children got out and started up the steep hill on foot.
"This is as bad as the dragon," said Fredericka between puffs. "Does somebody have to be kidnapped every time?"
"Who would think a mere baby would be so revengeful?" said Susan.
"It's a 'bad black-hearted baby!'" said Abbie, in the words of the poem by Mr. W. S. Gilbert.
"Maybe it isn't," said Barnaby. "Maybe all babies feel like that, if they could express themselves. Maybe they'd all turn on us if they could!"
The five children rounded a bend, and the station came into view, with the little girl and the oversize baby in the act of arriving on the platform.
"Oh dear," said Susan. "Suppose a train's just coming in?"
One was.
Seeing the two waiting forms, the engineer brought the train to a stop.
"What if they get on?" said Abbie.
"That baby could disrupt the whole transportation system, if I know it!" remarked Barnaby.
They got on.
Luckily the kind conductor saw the five children struggling up the hill and waited. The children clambered aboard in the wake of their quarry, the whistle went "Toot-toot!" and the little two-car train continued on its way to join the main line.
Traveling with a small child can be difficult at the best of times. When a child looks like a prosperous businessman of thirty-seven but has the heart and mind and soul of a babe of one (if a babe of one could talk), it can be embarrassing to the point of tears. And so the five children now found it.
First the baby chose to
sing.
"'What does the train say?
—Jiggle joggle jiggle joggle!
What does the train say?
—Jiggle joggle jee!'"
it chanted, in words familiar to all well-read households.
But the words did not awaken a chord in the heart of the lady sitting just behind.
"Really, sir," she said, tapping the baby on its manly shoulder, "if you must bring your children on public conveyances, can't you amuse them in some more quiet manner?"
The shameless infant paid no heed.
"'Will the little baby go
Riding on the locomo?'"
it chanted.
"'Loky moky poky stoky
—Smoky choky chee!'"
The lady tapped its shoulder again. "If you are not silent at once," she said, "I shall speak to the conductor!"
The baby turned in its seat and observed the lady. Then it nodded. "I thought you'd look like that," it said.
"Why, of all the I never heard!" said the lady.
"I'd complain, Pearl," said her companion.
"I mean to," said the lady.
"Tickets, please," said the conductor, appearing in the aisle.
"Don't want any," said the baby.
"Come, come, sir," reproved the conductor.
"Come where?" said the baby, with interest. In a suddenly docile mood it got down from its seat. "Shall we go for a walk now?"
"Certainly not!" said the conductor. "Pull yourself together, sir! Tickets, please!"
"Oh, all right," said the baby with a shrug, taking some already collected tickets from the conductor and putting them in its pocket.
"No, no, no. Give me your tickets!" said the conductor.
"Indian giver!" said the baby, handing back the tickets it had taken.
The conductor mopped his brow.
"Conductor," said the lady in the seat behind, "I have been listening to this person's remarks and observing his conduct. In my opinion he is mentally disturbed and no fit guardian for innocent children!"
"You're right, Pearl," said her friend. "In my opinion he should be put off the train and his family turned over to the Welfare Society!"
"No, don't do that," said Abbie.
"We'll watch over him better from now on," promised Barnaby. "We'll see that he behaves."
"He's not bad, really," said the little girl. "Just fractious."
"Listen to the poor little things defending him!" said the lady indignantly.
"We'll pay for the tickets, too," said John. "We've got a dollar and a half we earned, between us. Will that be enough?"
"Do you hear that?" cried the lady. "He makes these poor little children work to earn money for him! Oh, how vile!"
"Lowest of the low!" agreed her friend.
"If you ask me," said a man in the seat ahead, turning around menacingly, "a father like that is nothing but a skunk!"
"He should be horsewhipped!" said a lady across the aisle, joining in.
"Oh stop! Oh don't! He's not our father!" wailed Susan.
"I thought as much!" cried the lady who had been first to complain. "He is probably nothing but a kidnaper! Conductor, arrest that man!"
"Now, now. Keep calm. Order, please," said the conductor. And he turned back to deal with the baby.
But at this moment the baby's eye was caught by something at the farther end of the car, and it pushed past the conductor and ran down the aisle. Barnaby had an alarmed thought and tried to follow, but the conductor was in his way. He hesitated. What would the irresponsible baby do next?
What it did was stop at the water cooler. First it filled a paper cup with water and drank it. Then it started making more cups into paper aeroplanes and sailing them down the car.
"Whee!" said the baby.
"Everybody stay where you are. I'll handle this," said the conductor. And he approached the water cooler.
"Aren't you ashamed?" he said. "Get hold of yourself. Be a man."
The baby seemed to consider this advice. "All right," it said. Then it took the conductor's cap off the conductor and put it on its own head.
The cap seemed to give it a new idea. "I want to drive the train," it announced. "I wish I could drive the train now!"
This was what Barnaby had been afraid might happen, all along.
Because, of course, the charm was still in the baby's pocket, but the baby didn't realize its magic power and wouldn't have known the arithmetic to handle it if it had.
What happened next was exactly what you might expect. No sooner did the baby utter its wish than it vanished. In its place appeared the driver of the train, looking around him dazedly.
"What does this mean, Formsby?" said the conductor sternly. "Why aren't you at the throttle? A New York, New Haven, and Hartford man never deserts his post!"
"I didn't," cried the astonished driver. "Did I?" He looked around. "Why, so I did! I don't know how it happened!" Then an expression of horror came over his face. "If I'm here," he said, "then who is driving the train?"
The conductor looked at the spot where the baby no longer stood. And he turned pale. "I don't know," he said, "but I have a good idea."
The complaining lady had moved meddlesomely forward, and now she overheard this. "Do you mean to say," she cried, "that we are in the hands of that maniac?"
"We're doomed!" moaned her friend.
And indeed from the actions of the train at that moment, it did truly seem as if they might be.
Of course once the baby wished that it could drive the train, that meant that it could half drive it. In other words, it could drive it but not very well. One could only suppose it was trying each of the controls in turn.
The train stalled and started, buckled and bumped, and halted and hopped. Then it got up speed and shot through Cemetery Station without stopping, leaving the waiting people on the platform looking after it with expressions of dismay. Then it reversed and shot past them again backwards, and their faltering faces switched from right to left as if they were watching a tennis match.
By now the hardened commuters, who hadn't noticed anything wrong before, looked up from their papers.
"In all my years of bad service on this railroad," said one, "this is the worst yet. I shall write to the Department of the Interior!"
"I," said another, "am saving up money to buy a helicopter."
The conductor was pallid but spunky. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "a slight emergency seems to have arisen. But there is no need to panic as yet. Keep your seats and hang on!"
And he strode vengefully toward the front of the train.
Barnaby and John and Susan and Abbie and Fredericka and the little girl had all had the same idea, and as the conductor approached the closed-off section where the controls were, he seemed to be knee-deep in children. Several irate passengers had followed the conductor, and there was quite a traffic jam.
"Out of the way," said the conductor kindly but grimly. "It's no use your trying to defend him anymore. This is men's work."
"Don't hurt him," pleaded the little girl.
"If you'd just let us get to him first," urged Barnaby. "You see, he has this charm..."
"He has no charm for me," said the conductor. "I have seldom met anyone less charming in my life. You had better not watch. This may be painful." And he pushed open the door.
At the controls of the train the utterly emancipated baby pushed at this handle and pulled at that one. It might not be very good at it, but it was enjoying it to the full.
"Jiggle joggle," it sang. "Jiggle joggle jiggle joggle jiggle joggle jiggle joggle..."
The conductor and the other men closed in.
Susan and Abbie and even Fredericka admitted afterwards that they did close their eyes during the worst of what followed. But Barnaby and John kept careful watch. So did the little girl.
The conductor and the other men seized the surprised figure at the controls and pinioned its arms. It showed fight, and they strove together.
Th
e scuffle was not a long one. From the pocket of the embattled baby something small and metallic flew forth. Barnaby and the little girl both dove for it and collided. It was John who picked it up, and perhaps this was as well. In her present mood the little girl might have wished herself and the baby twice as far as Toledo, Ohio, and left the others to deal with the maddened train.
But John took things one by one. Considering the circumstances, he did very well.
First he wished the baby were twice itself again. The charm divided the wish neatly in half, and the avenging conductor faltered and fell back as he found himself struggling with a mere one-year-old who squirmed and giggled and crowed in the delight of utter ticklishness.
The conductor rubbed his eyes. So did the irate passengers. And the little girl ran forward and caught the baby up in her arms.
"Oh, Baby, Baby!" she cried. "Forgive me for leaving you behind, and I'll never, never forget you again!"
"Coo," said the baby. And it sucked its thumb.
"Great Scott!" said the conductor. And "What next?" said the passengers.
Next John wished that he and the rest of his party were home again on lower Weed Street. Immediately he and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka and the little girl and the baby found themselves sitting on the porch of the big white house.
"There," said John.
"You're forgetting that poor train," said Susan.
"That's right!" said Fredericka excitedly. "Nobody's driving it now. It'll go right to the end of the line and crash!"
"Or even if the driver gets to the controls in time," said Abbie, "think of the effect on the passengers! They're prob'ly all suffering from shock by now. Their poor brains'll prob'ly never be the same!"
"They'll have to go to psychiatrists with traumas," said Barnaby, whose wide reading had taught him many a big word.
So John made another wish, that the train's whole madcap journey would be twice as much as forgotten by all the passengers and crew, and that its morning run would start all over again as if it had never been, only twice as much so. That ought to take care of everything.
And apparently it did, for a second later a "toot-toot" was heard as the train peaceably approached Talmadge Hill station once more.